12 June 2011

Real Science Under Attack - The Dirty Tricks of Rex Dalton

TheScientific Establishment recently turned up the heat on scientist AllenWest and the rest of the Younger Dryas Impact Event researchers by unleashing their attack dog,Rex Dalton, whose hitpiece is being used to smear West's good name andthe Younger Dryas Impact Theory by proxy. While this is an unfortunateturn of events, we are not entirely surprised here given what we've seenof psychopaths in other quarters of society. If there is oneoverarching point that we wish SOTT readers to understand, it's thatpsychopaths do control our world - all of it. Whilethis should be plainly obvious when it comes to corrupt governments,corporations and religious institutions, the world of science andacademia is no exception to this fact.

The assumption of Uniformitarianism underpins many if not all scientificdisciplines. Its proponents argue that the "present is the key tounderstanding the past," that the slow gradual processes we see innature today have been constant throughout history. An enormous numberof scientists across many fields have staked their careers (whetherthey're aware of it or not) on this fundamental assumption. ThisUniformitarianist, or gradualist, approach is used to explain thingslike geological features, celestial events, species evolution,civilization advancement, technological progress and so on. When itcomes to catastrophic events, the Uniformitarian-dominated sciencespermit only consideration of those which may have happened on atimescale of millions of years, like the Cretaceous - Tertiaryextinction event 65 million years ago that supposedly wiped out thedinosaurs. To admit that catastrophic impact events occur on the timescale of human historywould mean surrendering the comfortable notion we live in a safe andstable world that has evolved in splendid isolation, shielded fromcosmic intervention. Few people, even scientists, are prepared toexamine the overwhelming data indicating the reality of cycliccatastrophism. The elite of our world have gone to enormous lengths toprevent the masses from knowing this, so it's not difficult to see howtoday's Uniformitarianist approach serves a lot of interests.

Just a little background: The group of researchers composed ofRichard Firestone, Allen West and Simon Warwick-Smith (usually referredto as Firestone et al) put forth the evidence in their book The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophesfor a significant impact event around 13,000 BCE. Such a timeframewould, of course, place the event well within the context of humanhistory, an event that may be the source for myths about the destructionof an antediluvian civilization. If you've been a regular reader ofSOTT, you'll know that we consider the evidence gathered by Firestone etal to be of vital importance in understanding the reality and magnitudeof impact events. Even if we may disagree with their stance on how thecomets arrived in the Solar System courtesy of a supernova explosion(we assign higher probability to alternative hypothesesexplaining the origin of comet clusters), the impact evidence theydescribe is very good. Rather than the present being the key to thepast, as Uniformitarianists believe, understanding the past as describedby Firestone et al. becomes the key to understanding our future.

With Firestone et al making waves in the scientific community, along comes establishment lackey Rex Dalton, a former writer for Nature, to attack Allen West, a retired geologist, co-author and field researcher of the aforementioned book, in a completely ad hominem manner. We published our own heavily commented versionof this slimy article, pointing out how Dalton sought to kill themessage by attacking the messenger. Dalton chastised West for not beinga formally trained geologist (Dalton himself is only a journalist, mindyou) and latched onto a little run-in West had with the Californiaauthorities over a decade ago, before negating the majority of impactevidence gathered by Firestone et al. by focusing on questions that havesince arisen about a tiny sliver of evidence cited in their book.Unfortunately, many scientists won't see it this way, and instead spreadDalton's article around as if it were gospel (this is alreadyhappening). Dalton's piece is a perfect example of the disdain theScientific Establishment has for real science - the kind of science that could help humanity escape from the shackles of history.

Now that readers understand a little bit of the background and contextof this sorry tale, let's recap with some of the accusations made byDalton in his original article. Here's how the article begins:

An elegant archaeological theory, under fire for results that can't be replicated, may ultimately come undone.

It seemed like such an elegant answer to an age-old mystery: thedisappearance of what are arguably North America's first people. Aspeeding comet nearly 13,000 years ago was the culprit, the theory goes,spraying ice and rocks across the continent, killing the Clovis peopleand the mammoths they fed on, and plunging the region into a deep chill.The idea so captivated the public that three movies describing thecatastrophe were produced.

So far, so good here. Now Dalton steps up and shows his real agenda:

But now, four years after the purportedly supportive evidence wasreported, a host of scientific authorities systematically have made thecase that the comet theory is "bogus." Researchers from multiplescientific fields are calling the theory one of the most misguided ideasin the history of modern archaeology, which begs for an independent review so an accurate record is reflected in the literature.

As we'll see below, many of these "researchers from multiple scientificfields" have only looked at isolated evidence gathered by Firestone etal. Some of these researchers Dalton quotes have no connection to anypart of this area of study. Their biases seem to be just thrown intothe mix just to give the impression of a united front against the ImpactTheory. The researchers who do have expertise in this area of studydon't appear to have looked at all the evidence; they instead seemfixated on isolated aspects of the theory with no consideration of thebigger picture. Could anyone from this crowd ever really give theImpact Theory an independent review? Notice the double-speak here too.The phrase "independent review" is implied to mean "Uniformitiarianbias" by Dalton. Further down Dalton states:

Yet, the scientists who described the alleged impact in a hallowed U.S.scientific journal refuse to consider the critics' evidence - insistingthey are correct, even though no one can replicate their work: thehallmark of credibility in the scientific world.

This Impact Theory isn't a single experiment which can be readily"replicated" and quickly verified. Think of the theory as a long listof clues, or independent findings and data-points, all facing inwards atthe likely culprit - that Earth did collide with some large space rockssometime around 13,000 BCE. Reading the Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophesis almost like reading a detective novel, you really feel theexcitement of this team of researchers piecing together the clues tofind out who (or what) 'dunnit.' Admittedly, parts of this theory canand should be verified or refuted by other open-minded researchers; it'spossible that some pieces might have to be thrown out and others addedin or explained in a different way. All healthy scientific theories gothrough modifications over time as new data comes in. But overall,there has been a lot of work put into this Impact Theory and there aremany more groups besides this Firestone group working on similarproblems which deal with geologically recent impact events. DespiteDalton's deceptive presentation of a 'united front' of scientistsraising their 'concerns', none of these scientists have refuted all thefacts in favor of the Impact Theory, and some haven't even looked at thedata at all!

The primary authors of the theory are an unusual mix: James Kennett, avirtual father of marine geology from the University of California,Santa Barbara; Richard Firestone, a physicist at Lawrence BerkeleyLaboratory in California; and Allen West, an unknown academic from themining industry who lives in Dewey, Ariz.

"We are under a lot of duress," said Kennett. "It has been quitepainful." So much so, that team members call their critics' work"biased," "nonsense" and "screwed up."

Such intransigence has been seen before in other cases of grandscientific claims. Sometimes those theories were based on datairregularities. Other times, the proponents succumbed to self-delusion.But typically, advocates become so invested in their ideas they can'tpublicly acknowledge error.

Perhaps instead of explaining away the Impact Theorists' duress as being"intransigence" and "self-delusion", it might be useful to give theirside of the story fair play here? In other words, what sort of guffhave they had to put up with from the other side? Dalton doesn't seemto be at all interested in that, however. That would be too much to askof Dalton who has already revealed his agenda at this point.

Next Dalton moves in for the kill on one of the co-authors, Allen West:

...Indeed, the team's established scientists are so wedded to the theorythey have opted to ignore the fact their colleague "Allen West" isn'texactly who he says he is.

West is Allen Whitt - who, in 2002, was fined by California andconvicted for masquerading as a state-licensed geologist when he chargedsmall-town officials fat fees for water studies.

After completing probation in 2003 in San Bernardino County, he beganwork on the comet theory, legally adopting his new name in 2006 as hepromoted it in a popular book. Only when questioned by this reporterlast year did his co-authors learn his original identity and legalhistory. Since then, they have not disclosed it to the scientificcommunity.

West's history - and new concerns about study results he was integrallyinvolved in - raise intriguing questions about the veracity of the cometclaim...

Here Dalton makes West out to be a common crook and thus nowhere nearthe level of an 'objective' scientist. But does Dalton really have hisfacts straight?

Allen West was employed 13 years ago as a consultant for a company inCalifornia that contracted with several cities for water studies.Geophysicists can work without a license in California under someconditions. He thought they were following the law, but in this case, heneeded a license.

That inadvertent mistake led to a misdemeanor and a $4500 fine. TheDistrict Attorney acknowledged that there was no intent to defraud andallowed the misdemeanor to be reduced to a simple infraction that wassubsequently removed from his record. Allen West's record in the Stateof California is completely clean, and he has no "criminal record,"contrary to the claim by Rex Dalton in his article (see 1).

Dalton disparaged the quality of the work in question despitethe fact that he is aware that West's California geophysical workcontinues to be referred to positively in 10 reports by four Federal andState governmental agencies, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S.Bureau of Reclamation, the California Department of Water Resources, andthe California Energy Commission (see 2).

In 2005, seven years after Allen completed that work, he retired andcontracted to write the Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes. Preferringprivacy, he chose the pseudonym "West" instead of his given name"Whitt," and filed the name with the State of Arizona as a legal tradename under the designation "author"(see 3). He continued to use the new name in his scientific career andchanged his name legally, meaning it is not an "alias" as erroneouslyreported by Dalton. People often change their names for variousreasons, as for example, Isaac Asimov, who changed his name from Ozimov- nobody accused Asimov of deception.

Universityof Arizona anthropologist C. Vance Haynes and geophysicist Allen Westlook at the Black Mat Layer during a sampling excursion to the MurraySprings Clovis site in Southern Arizona.

As we pointedout in our original commentary on Dalton's article, documents show thatWest/Whitt had no intention of wrongdoing. In fact, it's pathetic thatWest even needs to defend himself here at all. Wasn't Dalton's articlesupposed to be about the shortcomings of the Younger Dryas ImpactTheory and not West's bureaucratic tangles from his previous employment?The fact that Dalton, himself only trained as a journalist with no real science credentials, mockingly criticizes West's lack of credentials is the height of hypocrisy. This ad hominemattack really shows Dalton's true colors, especially when we considerthat this attack forms the centerpiece of his article. Adding insult toinjury, Dalton again hits West with this false accusation further downin his article. For a former writer of Nature, one mightexpect more civilized behavior. This is a desperate, underhandedattempt to tarnish the truly Earth-shattering findings of Firestone'sand West's work.

The remainder of Dalton's article is mostly a hack job, giving thereader the impression that there is this 'growing concern' amongscientists that Firestone and West are just making up all this impactevidence as they go along. Although still quite deceptive, it's reallythe only part of his article that touches on anything even close toactual science, albeit very selectively. He quotes a number of hisbuddy scientists who have attempted to refute some aspect of the ImpactTheory, giving people the impression that all these 'scientists' shouldhave some working knowledge of the Impact Theory itself (which doesn'tappear to be the case). Here are their claims:

Tyrone Daulton - Materials Scientist: "Reported that supposed nanodiamonds formed by the impact were misidentified"

Mark Boslough - Physicist: "Reportedthat radio-carbon dating of a carbon spherule sample shows it is onlyabout 200 years old - an "irregularity" that indicates is it not fromthe alleged 12,900-year-old impact time."

Vance Holliday - Archeologist: "Suchmixing of spherules from different eras could invalidate any conclusionthat higher spherule counts represented evidence of a comet impact." (Referring here to the finding by Boslough above.)

Jeffrey Severinghaus - Chemist: "Askedif he would seek [a public inquiry of the Impact Theory], he said,'Absolutely. It is really important to maintain the public trust inscience. That means if there is a bad apple, it is rooted out andexposed.'" (If there should be any inquiry, they should look intothe last 60 years of academia and root out all the bad apples holding upreal progress in the sciences. It's very telling that these bozos wantinquiries into Firestone et al, but were either too afraid or justdownright arrogant to get to the bottom of 'Climategate'.)

Dalton's only science arguments, based on the claims by thisaforementioned bunch, boil down to evidence from sediment samplesgathered at a certain layer that Firestone and West refer to as the'black mat'. This is a black layer in the sediment which indicates theboundary where Clovis culture artifacts appear. Just below this layerone can sometimes find tools, implements, discarded animal bones from anancient people dubbed the 'Clovis people'. Above this layer onetypically finds nothing, at least not for quite some time. This is alsothe layer where mammoth fossils and other animal remains of theHolocene era end, at least in North America. All this implies that this'black mat' layer may hold some clues about how the Clovis people andall their animal friends suddenly disappeared. (It's amazing to us thatgeologists and archeologists have never made this connection, at leastnot officially.)

In fact, that's exactly the line of reasoning which Firestone and Westfollow in their book. They hypothesize that this 'black mat' region isthe leftover remains of charred vegetation and other burnt matter whichwas buried after 'something' caused a massive conflagration on the NorthAmerican Continent. They describe many other sediment and chemicalanomalies from this 'black mat' layer which indicate something more thanyour typical uniformitarian, gradualist processes at work during thistime period. So when the folks above quoted by Dalton talk aboutnanodiamonds and magnetic spherules, they're talking about the sedimentanomalies that West discovered in this 'black mat', the place where allHolocene life met an abrupt end. These anomalies are what Firestone andWest believe are the result of an extra-terrestrial impact. The theorybehind why and how nanodiamonds, magnetic spherules could form duringan impact is beyond the scope of this article, but the Cosmic Catastrophes book does a good job of explaining it in layman's terms.

While these sediment anomalies are certainly interesting evidence andshould be taken into account, they by no means represent the entireImpact Theory as presented by Firestone et al in their book. The bigpicture of Earth being impacted by comets really doesn't change with orwithout this evidence of sediment anomalies. This is just the "icing onthe cake", one could say. Even if this sediment evidence can berefuted, as Dalton and the other detractors claim, this still does notinvalidate the mass of other evidence for impacts gathered by Firestoneet al. It's an obvious obfuscation on Dalton's part to imply that theevidence he's pointing out is 'all there is' to the Impact Theory.

Dalton cites Mark Boslough's radiocarbon dating of micro-spherules inthe black mat sediment layer to just 200 years old, when they obviouslyshould have been much older to refute Firestone et al's theory that theycould only have formed in super-heated conditions. But the authorsrelate several times in their book just how precarious relying onradiocarbon dating can be. Dalton must have missed this section,otherwise he would have realized just how weak any dated evidence iswhen attempting to confirm or refute the Impact Theory.

Exploring the radiocarbon issue further, Bill discovered that somePaleo-Indian radiocarbon dates were laughably wrong. For example, datesfrom the Paleo-Indian sites at Leavitt and Gainey, in Michigan, camefrom layers that scientists knew were 13,000 years old; and yet theradiocarbon date came back suggesting that, inexplicably, thelong-vanished Ice Age Indians were still hunting extinct camels when theEgyptian pharaohs were building the Temple of Karnak 2,800 years ago.

Another 13,000-year-old site, at Thedford, Ontario, Canada, seemed toshow that the long dead Indians miraculously came back to life and livedup until about the time of Jesus. In addition, the most astoundingClovis-era site of all was at Grant Lake in Nunavut Province in northernCanad, where the long gone Ice Age Paleo-Indians had apparently beenhunting mammoths during the time of the Battle of Gettysburg in the U.S.Civil War!

[The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes p12]

So much for Dalton's nitpicking of incorrect dates of sediment samplesto give the impression that the Impact Theory is maligned byinconsistency! Any evidence that relies on radiocarbon dates needs tobe taken with a lot of salt. Radiocarbon dating might work well for thelast 6,000 years or so, but beyond this the assumption about the rateof cosmic radiation (which determines the amount of C14isotope in living things) gets a bit sketchy. It's clear that Dalton isgoing after a capillary and pretending it to be the jugular with hisobsessing over sediment sample dates, all the while relying on hisreaders' ignorance of the overall evidence for the Impact Theory to fillin the gaping holes that he leaves in his logic.

So what other evidence do Firestone et al provide, which Dalton has so conveniently omitted from his article?

The Story of the Carolina Bays

The Carolina Bays are the elliptical depressions concentrated along theAtlantic seaboard. Typically these are not viewable from the ground;people only begun to notice them after the advent of flight. There arean enormous number of these 'bays' (over half a million, in fact), eachone rimmed with a layer of sand.

An interesting feature of these 'bays' is that the angle of theirelliptical shapes all point to one of two general locations. Tracingthese locations back towards the west, one finds that the lines seem toconverge on two central points: one point is at the bottom of LakeMichigan, and the other is at the lower part of Huron Bay in Canada. Itwas later discovered that 'bay-like' depressions exist in the AmericanWest, South-West and around the Great Plains regions too. Many of these'bays' form 'crater chains', again pointing back to the same twocentral locations to the north. It's likely that these locations inCanada and Michigan were covered with thick sheets of ice at the timewhen these 'bays' were formed, so an impact at these locations wouldprobably have caused an explosion of ice.

Showing the two general locations where the Carolina Bays and similar crater-like depressions converge.

Thisis exactly what Firestone and West propose, that these central pointswhere the tips of the Carolina Bays converge was once covered with thickglaciers prior to 13,000 BCE. An impact at these ice-covered locationswould have sent massive chunks of ice along Southwestern andSoutheastern trajectories hundreds of miles long, resulting in averitable blitz of overhead explosions as half a million pieces ofdebris exploded on re-entry into the lower atmosphere to form, thanks toatmospheric explosion ablation, all these 'bays' we see along theentire Eastern seaboard and in the Southwest too. An impact might alsoexplain the washed-out features or sand drumlins found in certain partsof North America, like the area around Northern Minnesota and CentralCanada. Such an event would have likely caused a sudden surge of meltedfreshwater to reach the oceans too, followed by rapid cooling of seatemperatures, and thus plunging the Earth back into an Ice Age. Itmight also explain the sudden rise in sea level around this time, asshown in studies of coral reefs. There are still a lot of points to beworked out in this theory, but the general idea of a sudden impactleading to immediate geological and climate changes is pretty solid.

Black Specs in Mammoth Tusks

It might seem strange to some that evidence for cometary bombardmentcould exist in ancient mammoth tusk fossils, but here is anotherinteresting fact which Firestone et al uncovered. After digging throughboxes of mammoth tusks, they discovered tiny black specs, some slightlyred, indicating embedded iron in some of the tusks. Upon closerinspection, it became clear that something had sent tiny shards of ironzipping through the air at high velocities, likely killing these animalsinstantly. They also discovered the same black, iron specs in mammothskulls as well, indicating that these animals did indeed die by somesudden, explosive event.

Showing the black specs found in some mammouth tusks, indication of an explosive impact event.

Thesame micro-bullets of iron turned up in mammoth tusks as far away asSiberia, and in antlers and flint pieces from North America as well.Whatever caused this blanket of micro-sized iron bullets to spray acrossthe Northern Hemisphere continents at such incredible speeds must havebeen an enormously explosive event. Mammoths have also been foundburied in ice from Alaska to Siberia with undigested food in theirmouths. It's pretty clear that whatever killed these creatures did itinstantaneously. The same event seemed to have frozen them instantly aswell, since many of their remains were discovered in an well-preservedstate. No gradual process can account for this.

These are just some of the major clues followed by Firestone et al intheir book. Dalton's article mentions none of these points.

Conclusion

Rex Dalton really doesn't have a leg to stand on when refuting theYounger Dryas Impact Theory put forth by Firestone et al. The questionis, why would he sink to such low-ball tactics and risk exposing himselfwith such shaky scientific reasoning? We've published other articlesby Dalton on SOTT prior to this one and most seemed fairly balanced andinformative (although you can be sure we will be reading with a verycareful eye from now on). It's interesting that another topic whichDalton focuses on is Neanderthal research, an area in which we've also taken an interest indue to its implications for research into the origins ofpsychopathology. What twists of the truth are in store for us from Rexin this other area of study, we wonder? Is Rex getting paid forservices rendered to the Cult of Uniformitarianism, or is he merelyseeking recognition as an attack dog, licking his masters' boots, if youwill? We realise these are strong words, but we feel strongly aboutsuch double standards that prevail in corrupt science. We should alsonote that Rex is not unique; there have been many of his ilk to comealong playing the role of disinformation peddlers in the world ofscience, and we do our best to point them out here on SOTT.

Whatever his motives, the end result of his efforts is an attack oncatastrophism, at a most sensitive time in history; a time when more andmore people are waking up to the reality that Earth might not be assafe a haven in the cosmos as we once thought. How will the people lookupon the Rex Daltons of the world when they understand not only thatthe Scientific Establishment have no ability to protect civilizationfrom incoming comets, but that they knew about the threat and covered it up in service to the elite? Only time will tell...

I don't get the "uniformitarian" argument as the regular if discrete periodic impacts are a uniformitarian concept. There is lots of evidence that such impacts are a feature of the planet's history and there is one of these on the way as I write.

Unfortunately the "suppressors of the truth" prefer not to consider such a possibility or give light to the evidence.

Of course the motivation behind Dalton's "work" is easy to evaluate. The pschopaths and their accolytes who control the planet cannot countenance the possibility of people or events being beyond their control. So events or the possibility of such events must be denounced.

As it is the majority of the sheeple would rather dwell within the certainty of lies than embrace the liberating uncertainties of truth.